Texas-based companies have made multiple attempts to take southeastern Oklahoma’s water for at least six years.
SEOPC: Round 2 Southeast Oklahoma Power Corporation’s plan to build a $3.1 billion hydropower plant in southeastern Oklahoma in order to generate electricity for Texas initially foundered on the shoals of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission earlier this year.
SEOPC filed an application with FERC on July 31, 2018, for a preliminary permit to study the feasibility of a hydroelectric project to be located on the Kiamichi River near the town of Whitesboro, in Le Flore County.
However, Johann Tse of Dallas, Texas, was notified March 21 by a FERC official that SEOPC’s plans for a Kiamichi River hydropower project were rejected because of multiple deficiencies.
Nicholas Jayjack, acting director of FERC’s Division of Hydropower Licensing, informed Tse that SEOPC’s plans filed with the agency on Jan. 31, 2024, f or the proposed Kiamichi project were rejected because SEOPC “has not provided sufficient documentation,” Jayjack explained.
Kenneth P. Roberts, a Tulsan who owns land along the Kiamichi River, complained to FERC that SEOPC “has been harassing residents of southeast Oklahoma repeatedly with non-stop filing of permits … to install a n unwanted closed-loop hydroelectric storage facility on the ba nks of the Kiamichi River…” When Southwest Ledger asked Tse on July 21 whether he had fulfilled all of the requirements imposed by FERC four months earlier, he replied, “Your questions will be best answered by FERC as to w hether we have met their requirements… Please contact them directly, and I am sure they will be very helpful.”
When the same question was posed to FERC, Celeste Miller of FERC Media Relations wrote via email July 23, “We issued a notice on July 8 commencing the Integrated Licensing pre-filing process for this project. Prior to issuing the notice, we reviewed the Notice of Intent and Pre-Application Document.” An attached notice contained information about “public meetings … held” in Oklahoma and Texas “to receive input on the scope of the en vironmental issues that should be analyzed in the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) document.”
And before SEOPC was Tomlin Energy An earlier suitor, prior to SEOPC, was Tomlin Energy LLC – which had three bites at the apple.
In a preliminary permit application filed with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission on March 19, 2019, Tomlin Energy, based in Addison, Texas, a city immediately north of Dallas, disclosed that it wanted to take 33,000 acre-feet of water from the Kiamichi River to power a closed-loop pumped storage hydroelectric generation plant.
Tomlin’s $1.5 billion power plant would have been constructed near Albion in northeastern Pushmataha County.
That generation plant would have produced electricity to “help balance the Southwest Power Pool grid in Oklahoma and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas grid,” Daniel O. Tomlin III wrote in a permit application printed in the Federal Register.
Citing protests from scores of area residents and opposition from the Choctaw Nation, Tomlin Energy canceled its plans in December 2022.